MAM
Shashi Sinha named Kyoorius media jury foreman
MUMBAI: The 4th edition of the Kyoorius Creative Awards is celebrating creative communication brilliance in the fields of digital, advertising and media. The curtain has risen, and the all-star jury panel for the media category has been unveiled.
The media jury will be headed by IPG Mediabrands chief executive officer Shashi Sinha. He started his career as the product manager of Parle. He set up Lodestar in the early 90s. In October 2012, he became the CEO of IPG Mediabrands and was given the task of bringing together a diverse group while making it future-ready.
Sinha took the role and made it wider – he worked on making the entire industry future-ready by participating and leading various industry organisations to look beyond their traditional beliefs.
The panel of judges, also consists of a line-up of creative geniuses, namely, Vikram Sakhuja (Madison World – Media & OOH group CEO), Prasanth Kumar (Mindshare CEO – south Asia), Kasper Aakerlund (IPG Mediabrands – Hong Kong CEO), Susanna Cousins (MEC director of strategy), and Rahul Welde (Unilever global VP – digital transformation).
Talking about the media category, Kyoorius founder and CEO Rajesh Kejriwal said, “Disruption is all around us. Media agencies are paving the way for marketing innovation and they are beginning in their own backyard, by re-inventing themselves. Marketers are looking to bridge the gap between content and consumers by devising effective solutions for brands.
Creativity is stemming from innovation, and innovation is the disruptor.”
Kyoorius Creative Awards 2017, is featuring the Media category for the second year, after its successful debut in 2016. “The Awards felicitate outstanding talent which seamlessly integrates idea and craft to create superior artistry and craftsmanship. The Jury’s exceptional calibre and experience acknowledges the importance our awards and its place in the creative arts,” said Kejriwal.
The awards invite participation from advertising, digital, media and mobile agencies, production houses, event management companies, photographers, brands, corporates, NGOs and even individuals.
The Open Jury Sessions will be held between 11 and 13 May, 2017, at Ecole Intuit Lab, Mumbai. This innovative session will invite people from the industry and media to attend the jury sessions, to learn and benefit from the discussions and the entries showcased.
While entries for awards will close on 19 April 2017, 26 April 2017 will be the last day to submit physical entries. The Kyoorius Creative Awards ceremony will be held on Friday, 2 June, 2017, at the Dome, NSCI in Mumbai.
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
